Urbanization shapes the environment, but the way in which it does so depends on where and how cities grow. In an effort to forecast how urbanization over the next couple of decades might affect biodiversity and the carbon cycle around the world, researchers have made detailed predictions about how urban areas are likely to grow. Continue reading How future urban sprawl maps out
Category Archives: Formats
Clunia excavation: Sigillata slideshow
This audio slideshow is a throwback to last year’s excavation at Clunia. I wanted to test out some software called Soundslides. So far pretty happy with it.
The song is one Steve and Joan sang a lot last year and I happened to record on one of the last nights of the dig. The photos are a grab-bag taken by students and supervisors throughout.
And what is a sigillata? Roman ceramic found in abundance throughout the empire and definitely at Clunia. See photos.
Fish trawling reshapes deep-sea canyons
Deep-sea trawling smoothes out the wrinkles of canyons on the continental slope, making marine mountainsides look more like ploughed fields, changing the habitat of deep-sea creatures. The process rivals landslides and storms as a shaper of the deep sea, according to work published today in Nature. Continue reading Fish trawling reshapes deep-sea canyons
Biometric Bracelet Lets a Medical Device Recognize its Wearer
A device that measures someone’s unique response to a weak electric signal could let medical devices such as blood-pressure cuffs automatically identify the wearer and send measurements straight to his or her electronic medical record.
For now, nurses, patients, and doctors juggle the job of keeping patients’ identities straight. But computer scientist Cory Cornelius at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, has developed a wristwatch-like device that measures a person’s “bioimpedance” to identify him or her to medical monitoring devices.
Cornelius and colleagues presented a prototype sensor at the Usenix Advanced Computing System Association workshop in Bellevue, Washington, on Monday. Individual impedance varies because each person’s wrist, for example, is a unique jumble of bone, flesh, and blood vessels. Continue reading Biometric Bracelet Lets a Medical Device Recognize its Wearer